Artificial Vitality

The padel court gleamed under artificial light, the glass walls reflecting everything we'd become. Marcus stood across the net, his racket loose in his hand, watching me with that familiar expression—part pity, part exhaustion. We used to play every Thursday for three years. Now it had been six months since I'd last picked up a racket, since the diagnosis had rearranged everything.

I peeled an orange, the citrus spray misting in the humid air. We always shared one after matches, sitting on the bench while his knee bounced with restless energy and I wiped the juice from my chin with the back of my hand. Now the orange felt heavy in my palm, each segment like a small admission that some rituals persist even when the meaning has rotted away.

"How are the treatments?" he asked, not meeting my eyes.

"Same." I tossed him half the fruit. "Chemotherapy on Tuesdays, poisoning my body to save it. The irony's not lost on me."

He caught it automatically, muscle memory overriding whatever awkwardness he felt. "Your sister mentioned you stopped the vitamin D supplements."

"They stopped working. Or I stopped believing they would." I gestured at the court. "This stopped working too, remember?"

Marcus's jaw tightened. In the end, it wasn't the cancer or the treatments or the existential dread of mortality that broke us. It was his inability to sit with someone who was dying without trying to fix it. His love had become a series of solutions: vitamin supplements, juice cleanses, experimental treatments, research papers printed and highlighted in yellow. He couldn't accept that sometimes there's no solution, only the漫长缓慢的过程 of learning to let go.

"I read about a new trial," he said now, hopebright and desperate. "In Switzerland."

"Marcus." My voice cracked. "I asked you here to say goodbye, not to be saved."

The orange half lay forgotten in his hand. Beyond the glass walls, the city hummed with people living ordinary lives, making dinner, walking dogs, falling in and out of love, unaware that somewhere, someone was choosing how to die with dignity while someone else was learning that sometimes love means standing witness instead of rushing in with answers.

I finished my orange, sweet and sharp and somehow exactly what I needed. Then I picked up my racket for the last time, and we played one final set, neither of us keeping score.